


The Butterfly Effect

by orphan_account



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, feminine coded reader, five is in the temps commission earlier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27612419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A musket. A stage play. A dead president. Someone has traveled to the very end of the Civil War in America, and they are planning to keep John Wilkes Booth from assassinating President Lincoln.This is where you and Five Hargreeves come in. Two temporal assassins dedicated to timeline preservation, the Temps Commission has assigned you to ensure that Lincoln dies as he should. However, in the midst of this dangerous mission, feelings change, tides shift, and alignments transpose. Should Lincoln really have died in the first place?
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Reader, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)/Reader
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	The Butterfly Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You and Five secure a place to stay during your mission. Tensions rise.

Time is a fickle thing. Always changing, always shifting to accommodate new actions or to disallow others. Modern philosophers tend to call this strange occurrence the ‘Butterfly Effect’, the idea that any tiny action taken can serve to create consequences of great importance. You don’t fully understand this idea, but you have a feeling that through your time with the Temps Commission, you might begin to get a more firm grasp on the concept.

Perhaps that was why the Commission ensured that your partner was an experienced one. He had been assigned to you as a means to instruct you further on the ins and outs of the Commission and preservation of the timeline. Temporal anomalies were common threats to your lives, and your partner was experienced with these threats beyond understanding. But then why did he look so young?

He wasn’t tall, necessarily, but his frame and his demeanor suggested that his presence was big enough without height advantages. His eyes were as cold and gray as steel, and his hair fell across his forehead like dark waves crashing against a pale sea. From the lines next to his mouth, you could tell that he had dimples, but they were a rare sight because his face was never seen with a genuine smile. Most importantly, however, was that he could have only been 25 years old, such a young line of demarcation for the Commission’s deadliest assassin. As the two of you stood on the outskirts of a street in Washington D.C., you couldn’t help but stare at him out of the corner of your eye. He evidently noticed because he immediately turned to call attention to it.

“Is there a reason why you’re staring at me?” asked your partner, glaring at you with poorly concealed contempt. You glanced away from his intense gaze.

“No real reason, it’s just that…” you paused, feeling your words comb across your tongue painfully. “You know. I still don’t know your name, and we’re going to be working together for the next week or so, so…”

His scoff was scathing enough to send embarrassment down your spine. “‘We’? I don’t have time to babysit the Commission’s newest recruit. You’re going to stay in this inn while I do the heavy lifting so we can both get our paychecks and go our separate ways.”

In the time you spent struggling to formulate a response to this unprecedented rudeness, an older woman with dark brown hair tinged gray opened the door in front of you. She was dressed in a loose white blouse, deep red skirt, and appropriately colored sash, proper everyday clothing for any Civil War Era woman that mirrored your own outfit. Though her face was kind, she was weighed upon by the sins of the world, and this was reflected best in the way her voice sagged as she spoke. “Hello, Sir and Miss,” said the aging woman, crow’s feet crowding on the corners of her eyes. “How may I help you?”

Your partner was quick to answer. “Hello Ma’am,” he said beside you as you demurely bowed your head. “Miss Campbell, I take it? My partner and I are looking for room and board.”

Miss Campbell took a firm look at both of you, her eyes rolling up your partner’s body before keenly inspecting your face, and you couldn’t help the bead of sweat that grew on your brow at such close contact. “I think I have a room for you two,” Miss Campbell said as she leaned back, a pleasant smile appearing on her face now that she was finished with observing her new guests. “Your names?”

“Five,” your partner responded, a name that caused strange looks from both you and Miss Campbell. “Five Hargreeves.”

‘Five Hargreeves.’ The last name drew particular attention from you, a surname that tickled recognition in your mind and forced your lips apart briefly as thoughts fluttered through your head. Of course, you couldn’t linger on such a revelation for very long because Five quickly turned his head to you and fixed you with an expectant stare, forcing your eyes from his to meet Miss Campbell’s. You ignored the pink tinge on your cheeks in favor of giving her your name, a few words that drew an even stranger look from Miss Campbell. She was rapidly looking between you and Five now, her pupils rolling from side to side as her lips struggled to form words. Five smiled sarcastically, and you did your best to fix Miss Campbell with an apologetic quirk of your lips.

“Uh… Right, of course,” Miss Campbell continued, smoothing the front of her skirt down with her thin, spindly fingers as she recovered from the shock of meeting two strange individuals. “I’m sure that I have a room for you. Would you like to follow me?”

Miss Campbell backed away from the door and, against her best wishes, flattened herself against a nearby wall to allow enough space for you and Five to enter, an action the both of you took advantage of. “Yes, thank you,” Five said as he moved into the house, you close behind with the handle of a small suitcase clutched tightly in your hands, a briefcase with which to return to the Temps Commission once the job was done, albeit modified to seem more appropriate for the period.

The house itself was a large one, made entirely of oak wood and polished floors with elegant furniture that you immediately recognized to be of high quality. While it wasn’t anything you would want in your own home, it was evidently expensive in the Civil War Era. Low-set couches and chairs with multi-colored cushions lined one end of the house, while a dining area with porcelain dishes decorating a square table rested close to where Miss Campbell rested. It was with a sad look that you returned your gaze to the aging woman. It was a large home, far too large for just her, and it must have been filled with great loneliness—perhaps that was why Miss Campbell was desperate to house kind strangers in her home for a small sum. Unbeknownst to your stare, Miss Campbell shut the door behind you, the hinges squeaking as she did so.

“Right, come with me, please,” Miss Campbell said as she passed the two of you, moving towards a large foyer with a grand oak staircase leading to the second floor, splitting into two directions near the end of the wall, one stairwell going left and one stairwell going right. Your footsteps echoed through the empty home as you ascended the stairs, sounds bouncing off the walls in such a way to suggest that no one had walked through the large abode in such a way in many years. Miss Campbell turned right up the stairs, and so too did you and Five, entering a hallway with flower-adorned wallpaper and tall oak doors lining the left. Miss Campbell paused at the end of the hallway, where she stared down a deep brown door with a tiny glance back to you and Five. With a small bow of her head and an ingenuine smile, she opened the door with a flick of her hand and disappeared within.

The room in question was large, and the centerpiece was a large, king-sized bed with tall poles on each corner. Long, flowery curtains draped from these poles, tied to the columns but fully capable of being swept to the center to block vision into the bed. Most important to you, however, was that there was no other bed, and you cast your eyes to Five’s sharp profile to find that he too was staring intently at the single bed, his lower lip rolling under his teeth with agitation hanging on his shoulders. However, when Miss Campbell turned back in the center of the bedroom to fix the two of you with a bright smile and a tilt of her head, Five’s smile returned, and you followed in suit.

“Will this work for you two?” Miss Campbell wondered, steepling her fingers in front of her.

“Yes, this will be fine,” Five answered quickly, giving you no opportunity to respond as he began to rifle through his coat pockets. “We will be here for a week, at least. How much will this cost us?”

Miss Campbell’s smile remained, but her demeanor shifted as her eyes sharpened akin to a keen businesswoman. “75 cents for a night, so five greenbacks and 25 cents for seven nights—that includes breakfast as well!”

Five immediately pulled a five-dollar-bill from his pockets, and as you looked at the slip, your eyes widened. President Abraham Lincoln was illustrated there, a man that was still alive that very day. That bill had to have been manufactured nearly 160 years in the future, and Miss Campbell was no fool. As the bill came into her hands, she stared at it with a keen gaze, narrowing her eyes before lifting her head from the strange piece of currency clutched tightly in her palms.

“Do you take me for some kind of fool?” Miss Campbell murmured to Five, hissing steam and anger growing in her voice. “Did you think you could give me false money and think I wouldn’t notice?”

Five was already reaching behind him for his handgun, his fingers itching for his firearm, and you shot your hand out to still his wrist with a firm grip, although your smile never fell from your face as you tilted your head to the side to fix Miss Campbell with a tiny smile. “See, ma’am, President Lincoln has just recently printed some new forms of currency to replace the greenbacks in an attempt to fix the inflation, and maybe make the most of a post-war economic boom,” you explained to Miss Campbell, lying through your teeth. “I assure you, you can use that bill anywhere.”

Miss Campbell seemed content to accept your explanation, but there was still something tickling the back of her mind. She turned the bill around to face you, one finger pointing at President Lincoln’s visage in the bill’s center. “President Lincoln doesn’t seem the type to put his own face on American currency,” murmured Miss Campbell. “I can’t imagine the south would be very excited about these new bills.”

She was suspicious, you knew that, but you also knew that you wouldn’t be capable of watching Five blow her brains out with a gun that came far after this woman would die. Your grip tightened on Five’s wrist as you continued, and you could feel his steel-gray eyes burning into the side of your face. “You know, President Lincoln doesn’t have direct control of printing more money,” you responded, gently nodding your head. “But I’m sure his Treasury Committee is very fond of him.”

These words seemed to quell the worries permeating Miss Campbell’s mind, but you could see by the sparkle in her deep brown eyes that she wasn’t wholly convinced on your innocence, nor Five’s. At the very least, she backed away from the issue and dutifully tucked the bill away along with the few extra cents that Five offered, tilting her head upwards with a plaintive quirk of her lips.

“Then our deal has been made,” Miss Campbell said, clapping her hands together in front of her with a smile before her eyes narrowed and her smirk turned mischievous. “Keep it somewhat quiet during the night, if you don’t mind.”

You didn’t like those implications. Five’s hand stiffened beneath your touch before relaxing and returning his hidden pistol to its holster, and your fingers slid away from his skin in response. “We’ll be as quiet as we can,” you responded with a nod.

With that, Miss Campbell made her escape. The door shut slowly behind her, and when the lock sounded, and you and Five were genuinely alone, Five moved to set his things on the bed.

“You should have just let me kill her,” he grumbled as he removed the barrel of a rifle from his own bag.

You were incredulous. You had thought you would be learning more about the Butterfly Effect through your immensely skilled partner, but it seemed he disregarded timeline alterations without issue. “What the hell is wrong with you?” you snapped back in return, setting your suitcase on a rickety desk on the opposite side of the room. “We’re here to protect Booth, not kill a poor woman who is offering us bed and board.”

“She’s going to be suspicious of us for the next few days,” Five responded, a click sounding in the air as he attached the rifle barrel to the gun’s body. “I would’ve saved us a lot of trouble, but someone’s a little too sensitive for their own good.”

“And  _ someone’s _ a petulant man child with a fragile ego,” you shot back, although you almost immediately regretted your words. “But you don’t see me complaining.”

Five finished reassembling his gun with a  _ click _ , only emphasizing the latent anger that boiled beneath his skin. “Right. Why don’t you go lodge a complaint with the Commission while I go do our job?”

You turned around to face him this time, and you dangled the black briefcase in the air as he stared daggers at your face. “How do you suppose you’ll get back without this?”

His dimples only deepened as he leaned forward, a dark aura descending upon his face. “You don’t know what I have up my sleeves.”

You were wise enough to admit defeat there, but also just as prudent. “Of course I don’t,” you admitted, setting the briefcase aside and pulling your pistol into your hands. “But what I do know is that we have a job to do, and the longer we stay here squabbling like school children, the more chances our enemies have to ruin the timeline. So, my suggestion is that we get out of this damn house and do our jobs. Deal?”

Five finished reassembling his rifle with a click, and he hung it at his side as he tilted his head to look at you. “It’s not my job to teach you the ropes.”

Again with this line of reasoning. Why was it so terrible to be on a mission with you? Were you really so truly abysmal that Five couldn’t quarter any interaction? While his insistence on going alone was forcing the once fiery determination from your body, you needed to be on this job, and Five wasn’t going to keep you from it. “I know you don’t want to work with me, Five, I get it,” you began, speaking carefully and slowly to ensure every word melted into his terribly thick head. “But I need to be on this job, and there is nothing you can say to stop that. I’m going with you. At the very least, work together with me so that we can get new partners by the end of this.”

Something seemed to get through. Five’s face shifted to accommodate a thoughtful disposition, and when he had appropriately considered your words, the expression disappeared, and Five was moving towards the door. “Come on, then,” Five said low, glancing down at you as he passed. “We need to sneak these guns past Miss Campbell.”

You couldn’t help the smile that rose to your face at his defeat. You had won the verbal duel, tongues clashing in a spar, and you would never live it down. Clutching your pistol in your hands, you tucked it into a holster tucked far beneath your skirts and bustled after Five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> small first chapter, but hopefully a good one! i hope you all liked it!


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